Road closures to affect downtown Temple as city enters final phase of City Center project

TEMPLE, Texas (KWTX) - More construction is headed to downtown Temple as the redevelopment project continues.

Starting on April 1, closures are coming to 2nd and 4th streets, as well as Central Avenue stretching from 2nd to 6th streets.

For several months, businesses downtown have gotten used to signs near or around their storefronts detouring traffic away from their shops and soon they will have to get comfortable with a new round of road closures.

Madison Sanchez, manager at The Hub Temple on 2nd street, says they are prepared to be in the path of this next phase.

“We are expecting a lot less foot traffic than we normally do so I just hope our regulars will still come in and support us,” Sanchez explains.

This construction is the fourth phase, a sub phase to the bigger downtown redevelopment project. The big project is in phase two, and this construction is the final step for that phase.

A milestone in the major project is the completion of the parking garage on 1sst street, across from Treno’s Pizzeria. However, it isn’t open to the public yet.

“Hopefully by mid, late summer 2024 is when those constructions are expected to be done and once that is done, we can go ahead and open the doors to the parking garage,” says Nohely Mackowiak, the spokesperson for the city of Temple.

Sanchez says they are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. “Once everything is done, I think we will have even more foot traffic than we did before like the new apartments and shops that are going up, I think it will be really good for all of the small businesses,” she says.

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